Metaswitch’s portable OTN Solution for Communication Equipment Manufacturers
Utilize the GMPLS experts to deliver a fully featured, standards-compliant OTN solution today, while providing an evolutive path for the OTN standards and features of tomorrow. All while greatly reducing development costs, time to market and risk.
OTN
The Optical Transport Network (OTN), defined by the ITU-T G.709 and G.872 specifications, creates a transparent, hierarchical network designed for use on both Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) and Wavelength Switched Optical Network (WSON) devices. It provides an efficient way to carry both next-generation packet services (e.g. Carrier Ethernet) and legacy circuit services.
The introduction of the OTN provides a network-wide architecture that encompasses multiple aspects of networking, such as framing, OAM, hierarchy, signaling, and routing. It is this architecture that enables carriers to reduce costs throughout the network, utilize legacy infrastructure, and address shifts in traffic/service types. Two switching layers are formed (TDM and WSON) and functions of transport, multiplexing, routing, management, supervision and survivability are defined. The OTN control plane, which is based on GMPLS, automates many of these functions, with corresponding operational benefits relative to a statically provisioned OTN network.
The Solution
Deliver OTN quickly to your customers with the confidence, reliability and support that come with a Metaswitch OTN Solution for Communications Equipment Manufacturers. Metaswitch’s GMPLS control plane offers a fully-featured, standard-compliant OTN solution that can be deployed immediately, greatly reducing development time, risk and operational costs. The portable OTN solution can be installed with the confidence that you’ll be delivering a best of breed product from the GMPLS experts. Metaswitch delivers evolutive OTN capability and will manage a migration plan to integrate future OTN standards, allowing you to focus your efforts elsewhere.
The Metaswitch solution for equipment manufacturers of OTN devices is based on the following elements.
- DC-RSVP signaling provides the ability to control G.709 OTN transport.
- DC-OSPF and/or DC-ISIS identifies topology to calculate best routing for control of G.709 OTNs.
- N-BASE, Metaswitch's portable operating environment for its network software products.
- High Availability Framework (HAF), Metaswitch's architecture for delivering fault tolerance and reduced downtime across its range of network software products.
- Metaswitch Engineering services which include professional services, training, and support directly from our Metaswitch engineering organization.
Metaswitch has vast experience in supplying protocol software products to communications equipment manufacturers, helping them build access, aggregation and transport devices. With Metaswitch you are assured
- technology you can trust from the GMPLS experts
- reduced project time to market
- a solution that is a fraction of the cost of developing the same functionality in-house
- reduced risk by partnering with a 30 year industry stalwart
- world class support and services.
The Challenge
Service providers need to address the
shift in traffic and service types while
utilizing legacy infrastructure.
To meet this need, communication
equipment manufacturers must
deploy an OTN control plane solution that:
- is quick to market
- is cost effective
- provides a quick, straight-forward migration path to evolutive OTN
- has multi-vendor interoperability
- delivers on the scale and high availability requirements of next-gen networks.
G.709 Model
Features and Benefits of Metaswitch’s portable OTN Solution
Metaswitch’s OTN solution minimizes risk and reduces development time for manufacturers of packet-optical devices. ITU and IETF standards-based routing and signaling components are available today along with a roadmap for the inclusion of future standards. The OTN solution from Metaswitch includes access to support, training and professional services which will abate integration concerns.
Reduced Risk: Metaswitch is heavily involved in the development of GMPLS standards for OTN. With over 30 years of experience delivering software code to communication equipment manufacturers, developers are assured they are working with technology they can trust.
Reliable: Metaswitch builds upon its history of delivering fault tolerant functionality as the OTN solution delivers
Range of Management Options: Metaswitch software provides extensive management functions enabling easy integration of management agents which can be based on SNMP (with IETF-standard MIB definitions), TL1, GUI, CLI or other implementations. A wide variety of management agents can be used, including pre-integration with our partners’ products.
Management information is maintained in the core products – removing duplication and avoiding complexity in the agent. The products have been designed to facilitate building devices that support both management and control plane provisioned OTN, allowing OEMs to sell their systems into the broadest possible market, making integration with the management agents simple, even in a distributed system.
Open and Customizable: Key run-time architectural decisions are made available to system developers via well documented and open interfaces that integrate DC-MPLS with the host platform to ensure implementation flexibility. Additionally, throughout the Metaswitch GMPLS code, developers may make value-add enhancements to the software behind well defined APIs. This allows the common core code to be maintained while encouraging product differentiation for each customer.
Scalability: The flexible architecture of DC-MPLS products means that the software can be distributed across multiple processors. The same portable product code executes without modification from low end single-processor systems through to highly scalable solutions.
Exceptional Support: The portable OTN solution from Metaswitch includes access to support, training and professional services which will abate integration concerns and reduce time to market. Metaswitch’s support has received top marks from its customers with a recent 96.4% rating for support that has met or exceeded expectations.
More on Metaswitch Expertise and Support
Metaswitch is the leader in the development of portable networking software products and is continually involved in the development of the GMPLS standards, including co-authorship and contributions to many of the IETF RFC drafts and OIF specifications. This has resulted in many milestones.
- The first portable GMPLS protocol solution in the world. The first GMPLS specification was the MPL(ambda)S drafts from Calient Networks and others in 2000. These became the GMPLS drafts during 2001. Metaswitch developed its GMPLS solution working alongside Calient.
- The first portable G.709 OTN protocol solution in the world. Delivered in early 2010, fully compliant with ITU G.709 and IETF RFC4328.
- The first portable MPLS-TP protocol solution in the world. Delivered in early 2010, fully compliant with the latest drafts and standards.
- The first portable UNI protocol solution in the world. In early 2001, Metaswitch extended its GMPLS software to support OIF UNI. In June 2001 the OIF mounted a UNI demonstration at SuperComm. And half of the 22 devices in that demonstration used our software.
- The first portable LMP protocol solution in the world. DC-LMP includes IETF and OIF UNI support.
Metaswitch’s support and training is considered one of the top assets and is continually graded the best by customers. We employ a first-rate support engineering team with detailed knowledge and problem-solving ability. Support engineers have tenure with the company and move between development and support. This allows the support team to benefit from a full flow of knowledge from the engineering side and that the engineers developing the product have an understanding for real world customer support and deployment issues.
By deploying Metaswitch’s portable OTN solution customers receive
- a comprehensive set of professional services to assist with customer-specific integration, feature enhancement, and testing
- training services to educate customer engineering staff and help with integration and testing
- comprehensive support services.